by Joe Hammond
If they’d known, or orchestrated their rows more effectively, they could have written their rants down on cards and held them up to their squablees, and that way they wouldn’t have needed to wake me up. Because these complaints were always the same, the pleading was always the same – to anyone, to everyone. The spitting and shrieking at each other, at the skies, for some kind of attention or some kind of distance. And wondering why nobody is listening. These must have been such ancient voices, so that the two small eyes peering down through the balusters were really no smaller or more frightened than the ones below.
So that one could have complained and the other shouted, ‘Snap!’
Or that they could have written down their complaints, cut them up, placed them upside down in rows, knelt together on the carpet and played matching pairs.
Or made snow globes out of each complaint and shaken them at each other.
*
I think a terminal diagnosis is the very finest tool a writer can have; it’s the view from an escarpment of both the beginning and the end. It’s rare to be able to see along the stretch of a landscape, so that nothing exists in isolation, but is seen instead as part of a wide sweeping single entity of land. And objects, or moments, which have long floated in vast pools of memory, suddenly become visible and re-formed and completely still.
Before we had children, Gill and I used to walk the Sussex Downs and all along the coastal paths. Even when we moved to London, we’d sometimes get up early on a Sunday and travel down for breakfast by the sea. The place we’d park was Seaford. We’d lace up our boots on the benches, looking out at the waves, and then ascend the first of many high-up undulating chalky cliffs. From the very top we’d glance across and see the Seven Sisters, and once or twice we’d walk these higher cliffs, but this was our place. This series of climbs and descents between a beachfront car park and a broad pebble expanse where the flood plains of Cuckmere Haven spill out into the sea. We’d walk in rain and sun and pulverize ourselves with wind and sea, along this giant carved out stretch of chalk. And even more than that: the single cliff, part way along the walk, which offers both a glimpse, not only of the end, but also of the start. The place where we had parked and the long, wide beach where we would eat our lunch. Looking ahead and knowing where it finishes; looking behind and seeing where it started.
There is a photo of five-year-old me, standing in the garden in grey shorts and a maroon T-shirt. My crooked knees are covered by my hands. I look ready for something. I look eager. And below this, an arrow drawn in red biro picks out the blond-haired Action Man at my feet.
Apart from time spent at the top of the stairs, I have two further memories from this period. The first is the discovery that I could make my own ice cream by melting two different flavours and returning them to the freezer. The second is coming into the living room and seeing every piece of furniture turned upside down. The floor strewn with spillages and books and vases and anything that had once stood upright now crooked or broken or on the floor. Not a single item in the room remained as it should be.
*
After my parents separated, I would visit my father every other weekend. The family home had been given up and he’d rented a small bungalow on a main residential street not far from where we once had lived. Sometimes I’d sit on the front wall and watch a group of older shirtless boys who’d cycle up and down, no-handed, with perfectly upright postures. There was a large garden with a pond and a large living room where I would spend my Saturday visits eating sweets and watching TV. There were several women who came and went, but the one I remember was tall and bony, with a tight blonde perm. Arriving one weekend, I noticed a hole in the unpainted living-room door, a fresh, deep dent about a quarter way up: the kind of hole you might make if you were to take a normal-sized hammer and swing it upwards very hard. I think my father laughed about it and what he told me in this moment was that the woman had tried to kick him. I believed this – not only because I was five, and believed what people told me, but also because I found her terrifying.
On one of these Saturdays I was lying on the living-room sofa watching the wrestling on World of Sport when this tall woman landed over the threshold of the room. Her movements were stilted and angular, as if she were hopping rather than walking. Her neck jerked uncomfortably left and right, and she appeared to be looking for something quite specific, but then she changed angles and diverted towards me. I suppose she must have been carrying a lot of tension, and that something must have happened, because once she arrived at the sofa she picked up one of the cushions and threw it at my head. I imagine, for a moment, that the two of us might have watched the cushion bounce away and watched it come to a stop on the carpeted floor, but if there was any peace, or a release for her in this moment, it seemed to pass quickly because she then bent her knees and, as she screeched, thrust out a kind of jazz-hands movement – as if this was her nest, as if her wingspan was vast, as if she’d landed here from another epoch and found that I’d eaten all her eggs – which I can understand would have been quite distressing. But at the time I didn’t know what this was. I took my feet down from the sofa, in case that’s what it was. It wasn’t clear at all. She just made this sound, without even looking at me, and then she left. It was the not knowing that confused me. It was a little bit more frightening because of that. So when I visited I was very careful about what I said or did.
She was the first I can remember of the women in his life from this time. Over about a ten-year period he must have found all of his girlfriends at the top of a very steep precipice and then continued going to this very same location to retrieve new ones. I imagine they may have been quite willing, given how frightening it must have been up there. I spent time with so many of them, from the age of five until I was fifteen, and they always seemed to be on the edge of something – of violence or despair or alcoholism, or all of these and perhaps some other things too. There was a common feeling of vulnerability and volatility, and I wonder what it was that he felt he needed from the sadness of these lives.
*
One of the great challenges facing children is that they’re always having to glance upwards at adults and, at a very young age, this angle can be considerable. It’s always so much better to be able to assess objects or people from a more or less level position. It’s a particular problem for children when the adults around them are tilting and swerving in a trajectory that carries significant amounts of risk. From their lower position to the ground it’s just not possible for children to properly assess the level of risk that higher-up individuals are subjecting themselves to and, by virtue of their proximity, the children in their care. This is why children are so vulnerable to those who exploit angular advantage for malign intent, or who do so because they are not, and never have been, and never will be, in safe control of their own altitude.
In the final few weeks in Portugal, Tom and Jimmy’s view of adult life had been delightfully skewed by our precipitous placement on the side of a mountain. When the bread van parked outside at 2 p.m. they reached up to the baker through his rolled-down window to each receive a fresh bread roll. And when our car wouldn’t start Gill managed to mime this action to four old men playing cards in the street. A few minutes later a tiny red tractor arrived with jump leads, and its arrival was treated with such awe by Tom and Jimmy. This key-turning mime had made Gill a local celebrity, and it seemed that it wasn’t just the gesture but the pathetic churning gurning sound that accompanied it. Across the village we were then universally greeted with a beaming smile, and the signature facsimile of Gill’s famous air ignition. A few nights into this newfound attention, we opened the front door and four village women stood on our doorstep asking Gill to come dancing with them. They giggled a little, looking sideways at each other, before spilling into each other’s shoulders in a bobbing motion and, whilst gyrating their hips and knees, demonstrated – through the repeated joyous rotation of their thumbs and forefingers – that Gill’s ignition mime had now b
ecome an established dance move.
*
My father’s house burnt down and he rented a flat with long corridors that had once been a retirement home. It had the fragrance of grandparents and chrome room numbers still attached to the doors. I believe I was still five, perhaps six, and he had a tall, dark-haired girlfriend, who was just nineteen years old. I don’t know, but I wonder if he felt prompted to be more active during this period, because of her youthfulness. In the evenings they were often at the pub, playing darts. Depending on the pub, sometimes I’d get a knock on the car window, which was always very exciting, and I’d be allowed to sit just behind the door with a packet of crisps. It was a period of time when he was also covered in rich, purple bruises all over his neck, chest, arms and back. I imagined they were painful and I was worried by them.
In that flat I remember a bedroom at the very end of the long, main corridor. I was particularly interested because it was inside this room that I first discovered a stack of porn, stored in a painted green rattan box at the end of the bed. In the mid 1970s, porn magazines were a slightly more conspicuous part of life, or so it seemed to me. They had yet to be completely consigned to the top shelf in newsagent’s and I remember it seemed to be quite normal.
Even though I was shocked when I finally got to see inside one of these magazines, and even though I struggled with the images, something always made me go back. There were a few occasions over the years when my father caught me with them and he always seemed to feel aggrieved or wronged – as if something had been done to him.
It was more common for this pique to ignite in response to something that one of his girlfriends had done or not done, like something not being cooked the way he’d wanted. I remember his clipped eruption and the way his arms would move wildly as he exited the room. I would freeze, looking straight ahead, so that with my peripheral vision I’d witness the thrashing swim-stroke movement of his arms – his angry slapping backstroke – across the living room and out into the hallway, shouting about the ingredients as he went, and the sense that he would have departed more rapidly, and with greater dignity, were he not having to wrench each foot out and lift each knee to free himself from some claggy kind of mud. It would have been silent for some time after that. This was the pattern. No one would have spoken and then he would have returned some minutes or hours later.
There was one Sunday on which a table had been set outside. I think the actual living-room table had been brought out into the garden and the dishes clinked and clonked as we all served ourselves. There was a lot of focus and not much conversation. And then my father asked about the gravy.
Reflecting on this incident now, I think the most likely reason for the absence of gravy was perhaps the inexperience of the cook. I can’t quite remember which of the girlfriends he was with at the time. I can’t quite picture her, but I remember she’d gone to a lot of effort because it all looked quite good to me. I imagine her mistake in this situation was entirely benign and that she had thought of almost everything.
He sank back in his chair: this gravy business seemed to be a really terrible oversight for him. Really disappointing. I think the sight of the dry ingredients was a little too much for him and he pushed his plate away. You could tell there was a sense of injustice about this situation; the last straw or something, and I think he said as much. And I was feeling bad for him because I always did. The twisting of his familiar features, the contorted, distorted anger of it all. And I would look away, or down, waiting for it all to finish, waiting for an object to be broken, waiting for what he had to say, about gravy or something. Waiting for him to walk away and for the next day when everyone could start speaking again.
Some time after the girl who was nineteen, there was an older woman in his life. She had a daughter of about my age called Kelly, and I froze when I first saw someone my own size in this house. I think we both did, but then she turned and flapped like a goose in take-off and trotted down the corridor, as if the bottom half was pony. And right until the moment when it ended so suddenly, about three months later, I don’t think there was ever any point when I wouldn’t have followed her at speed along the corridor.
I remember once discovering a collection of canes and whips. I asked around for why they were there, but no one would give me an answer. Then someone asked me why I thought we had so many older male visitors. I couldn’t answer that: I just added this to my void, which I now know to be the useful repository for all unhappy children. And I don’t exactly remember Kelly’s mum and whether this collection of objects had been hers, or whether she had been one of the other women he knew over these years who did this kind of work, but whatever the situation I think that was a confusing household for a child and I don’t think the available clues made it straightforward for Kelly or me to work it out.
*
We’re now several months into Tom’s subscription to Land Rover Monthly. The third copy arrived two days ago and Gill and I are taking it in turn to read with Tom about reconditioned crankshafts and timing-belt adjustment kits. Last night we learnt all about the second-generation P38 Range Rover and, in particular, that landmark moment in 1994 when the transition from the old 200Tdi to the new 300Tdi brought with it an added level of refinement to the torque and acceleration of the P38.
I’ve noticed that Gill is as prone as I am to sliding Land Rover Monthly behind the backs of sofa cushions, or slightly higher on the bookshelves than Tom might be able to reach. But just before seven, whatever we have done, a copy emerges and we begin this night-time read without any of us understanding anything technically more specific than engine or wheel.
However hard I find these passages are to read, I look at Tom’s face – its implacable adherence to these inscrutable texts – and I realize my discomfort is of such insignificance compared to the consuming effort of Tom’s endeavour. Something tiny is located deep within these monthly magazines that lies buried several miles underground, and we are all searching for it, despite none of us knowing what it is. Or if it does exist. But that doesn’t matter – its veracity or otherwise. Tom shines his powerful torch at the soil and Gill and I lend our hands to turn over the earth, using our fingers to sift for secrets that may or may not be present.
I recognize the burrowing of my six-year-old son. Every parent recognizes this work that children undertake. And even as he sits on my lap, my eyes are also watching from a quiet dark corner on the other side of the room, and peacefully observing this lonely universal search of a child, and understanding, and feeling that it’s all OK, and that perhaps it always was.
*
When I think of any children’s play, whether that’s playing Mums and Dads or anything else, I think of the pure oblivion that takes place, so that you could be an adult walking through the field of play and not a single child would register your presence in that moment. Whether that play takes place away from the adult gaze, or out in the open, it won’t affect the quality of what’s taking place, or that necessary feeling of immersion for those children involved. And when Kelly suggested she was Mum and I was Dad, the bedroom must have offered some of the architectural experience of domesticity, to which we probably added crockery and cutlery and other props. But I think the door was always closed, and we didn’t quite experience that oblivion in the moment, so that we might have checked the whereabouts of adults when we played – we might have wandered up the corridor, or into the garden, just to check. And then we’d come back, and it didn’t take long in the history of our play to think of the bed as being something vital in what we were trying to work out, and to think that our clothes may have been far less vital, or perhaps some kind of impediment.
I imagine this sense of oblivion is really important when trying things out through play, and maybe that’s an essential part of what makes it enjoyable. As our play developed in this propless way, I know that we smiled less and that some of the chatter we had grown to expect became much reduced once we had taken all our clothes off. It’s not just
children, but adults too, who stop talking when actions become unsafe. And I didn’t see much need to speak because Kelly had a much clearer idea of how this game was played. Because I was six I didn’t question why a girl of five would be quite so determined to achieve this end, in a game like this, or how she would have gleaned the rules for the way the pieces of the game were set up. I would take my own clothes off, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch or be active in what we were doing. I tended to be draping my arms back over my head as if I was looking for something behind me or perhaps that my hat had fallen off and I was using all my fingers to reach for it – looking up and searching for as long as I needed to or until the whole thing came to an end.
And that was it – from playing Mums and Dads, to this. I think about this time and wonder if the games of other boys and girls would ever lead to this. I’m sure it’s possible, but I think, more often, the minds of five- and six-year-olds don’t get to this. But I don’t know; just that ours did.
After we were caught for the terrible and selfish thing we did, I don’t remember us playing very much together, and it wasn’t long before Kelly and her mum moved on. I missed my gap-toothed friend as much as I have ever missed anyone in my life. And I have always remembered her and spent my life worrying about her – hoping that she is now OK and, perhaps, that she forgives me for the awful wrong I must have committed, whatever that may have been.
*
We’re all sleeping in one bedroom, in a cottage on a farm in rural Hampshire. It’s all bed in here and very little floor – so that we might as well be in the desert somewhere in a tent, under the stars. But it’s rainy and windy and both Tom and Jimmy are asleep in their beds: their bodies stretching out – their peaceful, working, breathing, sleeping bodies. I like to come in here and feel my restless breathing sinking into theirs. This room at night-time – the wind rattling the iron roof on the barn, the mice scratching behind the skirting boards. The rain falling from the guttering and the snort of a two-year-old as he runs his arm towards his head, turning his hand outwards and upwards like the movement of a small turbine, tilting him over and on to his back.